


Everybody Dies

by Scavenger98



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Canon Typical Everything, Mass Peggy Sue, Potential High-Concept Weirdness Later, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-01-17 17:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12370158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scavenger98/pseuds/Scavenger98
Summary: Westerburg High School wakes up on September 1st for the second time in under a year. One person is happy about it, most of the student body have no idea what's going on, and everyone who wasn't a ghost at the time is traumatized by the memory of their own fiery death.Or: The mass peggy sue fic nobody asked for.





	1. Haunted Heathers and Hunted Jocks

Heather Duke walks into her school on September 1st, 1989 and finds that the hallways are all but bare of people. In light of the weird dream she had last night, it’s all rather disturbing.

            A more thoughtful person might wonder why a power fantasy where all her tormentors died had felt so real, or why Veronica from kindergarten of all people had played such a big role, or even why it had ended with an excruciating flash of burning agony. The Duke family’s youngest child thinks about it for about two seconds, regrets that it wasn’t real, then gets out of bed and starts her day.

           But no car arrives to take her to school. When she finally gives it up as a bad job she remembers that her jeep is in the shop and she has to take the bus. She finds that all of six kids are on it, every single one watching each other with wide, silent eyes, jumping at sudden noises like rodents.

            As though death could be right around every corner.

            She goes to first period alone. She sits in the front, with just two other people behind her, shooting each other furtive glances but mostly just staring at her. The behavior isn’t all that unusual, but this fear is different. It isn’t about her. She hates it. Something about it scares her.

            A few hours later lunch comes and the cafeteria is abuzz as groups of five or so huddle around tables, leaning forward until the clack of Heather’s shoes on the floor sends them into silence. Every eye is on her, no awe, and no respect, just accusatory wariness.

            She can still remember the dream. It isn’t fading at all. In the shadow of a few dozen judgmental eyes, she turns on her heal and runs.

 

Ram can remember dying. He remembers the worst pain ever, the mean smile on her face as they both pulled the trigger, and then being dead. Being dragged along with Veronica because fuck her and her creepy-ass fucktoy boyfriend.

            He remembers watching her die. Watching everyone else die, and not caring too much because fuck, at least they got to have their damn clothes on for it. He didn’t hang around long after the bombs went off. Veronica and the asshat were dead. What was the point?

            But here he is, thinking that passing on is weirdly comfortable.

            His alarm goes off.

            That’s not right.

 

            Heather Chandler opens her eyes, looks at the calendar, puts on her bathrobe, and goes downstairs to eat something.

            The rug is soft under her bare feet. The air feels crisp and air-conditioned on her face. It’s nice having a body again. Her father seems somewhat nonplussed by her nonchalance as she grabs his mug of coffee off the table, quickly checks its contents, and downs a few gulps. It’s pitch black and hot as hell. The pain and bitterness are sweet as butterscotch.

            “Heather-”

            “Dad, when was the last time I had toast?” His mouth is still open, but she doesn’t wait for his response. “Too long! I think I’ll do that.”

            She doesn’t even spare him a glance. She sets the mug down and walks happily over to the refrigerator, swinging it open and pulling out bread, butter, and jam. She’s sliding two pieces down into the toaster when her mother walks in from the back porch, crossword in hand. She looks to her husband and finds only helpless disbelief. Heather happily ignores her presence and instead takes her time inhaling the amazing scents wafting from the machine before turning around and grabbing a plate from the pantry.

            The awkward silence is filled by the rhythmic **tictictic** of Heather’s breakfast cooking, and she’s perfectly willing to leave it that way. Her mother is the first to recover.

            “Honey, are you feeling alright?” Heather smiles, actually smiles without any sort of malice for the first time in her parents’ recent memory, leaning her elbows on the kitchen island and glorying at the feel of cold, unyielding marble.

            “Mom, I am the best I’ve been in three months.” Her toast pops up and she sets about slathering it in butter and jam, finally taking a first glorious bite, chewing for almost a full minute, and swallowing. “Don’t ever die, mom. It really fucking sucks.”

 

            The first thing Kurt does when he wakes up is to decide to call Ram. His father and mother are both in the kitchen going about their usual morning not much, so it’s easy for him to sneak back to the living room where the phone is.

            He paces for a second, frowning at the rug until someone picks up.

            “Hello?” His friend’s mother sounds tired.

            “Hey Mrs. Sweeney, it’s Kurt. Can I, ah, maybe talk to Ram?” She hums unhappily.

            “Oh, he says he’s not feeling well, doesn’t want to go to school. He seems fine to m-”

            Suddenly everything on the other end of the line is muffled. Something falls over, and there’s a yell, then a few moments of silence.

            “Hey, man.”

            “Hey.” Kurt smiles. He’s alive.

 

            Heather McNamara refuses to leave her bed, and for once she is immovable. Her mother gives it up as a bad job about an hour in and her father is already at work. The covers are wrapped around her like a cocoon, her back turned to the intrusive light of the morning sun.

            She can remember trying to die, being saved, and then dying anyway. She doesn’t ever want to leave this bed again.

            They hurt her, the memories; the feel of the pills in her mouth, the blazing heat of the flame as everything erupts around her. It hurts so much that just the memory leaves her shaking under the covers. Her mother gives up on extracting her about an hour in.

            It wasn’t a dream. She knows it more assuredly than she knows her birthday, or the color of her curtains. Nothing makes sense anymore. She hates this.

            The sound of wheels on gravel doesn’t truly register until they stop. Someone is here. That didn’t happen before. She curls up tighter and hopes it’s nothing. The minutes drag on, her clock’s ticking beating a steady metronome on her overextended nerves. The door clicks open and in walks a ghost.

            “Seriously?” Heather Chandler is decked out like she’s meeting royalty, augmenting her usual spotless perfection with her favorite diamond earrings, and a ruby the size of her thumbnail dangling in front of her nicest jacket. “Jesus Christ you’re a mess.”

And just as dismissive as ever. McNamara burrowed deeper into the blankets and hoped against hope that she’d just go away.

            “Ugh, fine.” And then the blanket is pulling away and the light is in her eyes. She grasps desperately at her precious defenses only to watch them be tossed casually over the end of her bed.

            “Get out of bed Heather, we’ve got assholes to find.”


	2. Decent People in an Indecent World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone else wakes up.

            Martha Dunnstock does not skip school. Not once in the last three years has anything less than debilitating sickness or a dead grandmother kept her out of class, mostly by sheer force of imagined parental disappointment. Today, however, is testing that record.

            She hadn’t known what to do when she woke up that morning, so she had fallen back on routine and walked the five minutes to Westerburg. She had thought about going to the principle’s opening address but the thought of being in the gym made her want to throw up, so she milled around in the stands of the football field until first period. She had sat in the back, watching the two other students in the room glance around significantly while Mr. Anderson stood awkwardly at the blackboard pretending there was nothing strange going on. Ms. Campbell was more pointed.

            “I don’t know what you kids think you’re playing at!” She posed angrily in front of her desk, toying with a piece of chalk as though she were about to throw it at one of her five total students. “If you think there won’t be consequences for an absence just because it’s en masse you’ve all got another thing coming! I wouldn’t be surprised if the ringleader of this little stunt is expelled!” She continued in this vein for almost ten minutes, never once seeming to put together that, seeing as they were present, the people she was ranting at probably had no more idea of what was going on than she did.

            After class, Martha was surprised to be approached by Anna Dunn. They’d been friends for all of a year back in middle school because of their last names and never talked again. She was a short, mousey sort of girl, hidden behind long bangs, loose jeans and a heavy coat that clashed horribly with the temperature. Her eyes shifted about for a moment as she seemingly gathered her thoughts.

            “I, ah… Do you remember?”

            “Ah, well, remember what?” It’s Martha’s turn to shift awkwardly, glancing around to see if some kind of prank is about to be pulled. Thankfully there doesn’t seem to be anyone incoming, and in the middle of the hall as they are it would be difficult to hide. Anna nods, her eyes narrowed, fidgeting with her books.

            “Nothing, I guess, I mean, ah… Well I’ll see you around.” She takes off at a brisk walk, leaving Martha alone with her thoughts.

            Veronica leaving her, Ram dying, jumping off the bridge and then dying in a giant explosion: all of it was real.

            Now she trudges distractedly down an empty hallway toward the dining hall, head swimming with implications. It’s the first day of the year again, and strange as it sounds, the easiest explanation for everyone’s behavior is that everyone knows it. Which means she actually died. She has no idea how to feel about that, or how to feel about not knowing how to feel, but fortunately or unfortunately she isn’t left to think about it for long.

           She registers briefly that she’s falling before hitting the ground and dropping her books. Before her is a wide-eyed Heather Duke, clutching at a notebook. Both of them are silent for a few seconds, though to Martha’s credit she spends them straightening her glasses and sitting up instead of gawking like the yearbook president in front of her. Duke finally pulls herself together enough to get on her feet and fix her clothes, but the note of subdued panic isn’t gone from her face.

          “What do you think you’re looking at, creep?” Her normally derisive voice is shaking a bit, and Martha can’t quite bring herself to cower like she normally would. Unfortunately that only seems to make things worse. “You’re all in on it, aren’t you? Who put this together, huh? Fucking say something!”

          “Shut up, Heather.” Three words like silk running impatiently over a razorblade, and Duke becomes silent as the grave. Martha turns to the two clacking sets of footsteps rounding the corner, and sees red and yellow.

          She has never been so simultaneously terrified and relieved.

 

            Jason Dean drags his fingers through his hair for the tenth time in the last two minutes and continues to fight the urge to punch something inanimate and fragile. He’s awake and everything looks the same as he remembers. He has no idea what to do about it.

            His room is all wrong. His window, which he hasn’t closed for the last three months even as the weather turned cold, has a perfectly functional lock where the pane meets the frame, and his clothes are still spilling out of a suitcase in the corner. An empty Styrofoam cup is sitting on his nightstand next to a book he finished ages ago, bookmarked halfway through. He can remember reading a few chapters to her, can remember the existential agony as her scent started to leave his sheets and her disappointed words echoed through his head.

             “You promised me.”

            Day in.

            “Goodbye, JD.”

            Day out.

            But it’s gone now. All of it is gone completely, and the image stuck behind his eyelids is the pained, desperate expression she wore as they watched each other bleed onto the boiler room floor, the bomb ticking down to zero.

            He killed her. He had convinced himself it was necessary before, but he’s done it now. He can remember shooting her and then blowing them both up, and in the face of that it takes every ounce of self-control he has not to grab his gun from the cabinet and put a round through his temple.

            He growls, channeling every bit of self-loathing he’s accumulated and sending it into the closet door. He feels skin break as his fist cracks the cheap wood and grits his teeth against the pain. His fingers scrape through his hair again and he paces back toward the bed. He’s not dead. He should be a fine mist of blood and ashes at the bottom of a burning tomb right now, so how is he awake and alive in this fucking room?

            He doesn’t keep a calendar, but as he desperately shoves the window open, the weather tells him enough. It’s a pleasantly warm late-summer morning. The sun is shining low in the sky. A few seconds of racing thought later, the voice he hates most worms its way up the stairs and confirms his suspicions.

            “Hey pops, if you don’t quite breaking shit and get your ass to work they’ll probably fire you! It’s bad form being late on the first day!”

            The first day of school, September 1st. “How the fuck…?”

            Cradling his hand, he goes to pull on fresh clothes. If he’s stuck in some pre-death hallucinatory delusion, he’s not going through it on a thawed-out brain.

 

            Veronica hadn’t been prepared for just how agonizing being shot was. Admittedly direct confrontation had been a stupid idea; JD’s skill at violence was the first thing that had attracted her to him. Still, she couldn’t have pulled the alarm. With Westerburg’s record he would have set off the bomb with half the school still in the gym grumbling. So, lacking the immediate mental capacity or time to come up with something better, croquet mallet it was.

            Their fight was not particularly elegant: he was bigger and more experienced than her, but his movements were sloppy and his gun was unwieldy in close quarters. She was getting in some good hits until JD finally kneecapped her, the school chant echoing like the taunt of a jeering multitude of devils somewhere in the background. She’d beat him upside the head with her mallet at almost the exact same moment, but there had barely been thirty seconds on the timer when she’d stepped into the room to begin with.

            He’d been sitting placidly in front of the bomb, smoking a cigarette as he waited to die. Some tiny part of her that she hated with a passion found his willingness to follow her into death kind of sweet.

           Thankfully most of her had stayed focused on not letting him kill every friend she’d ever had. There had been no words, just a moment of surprised eye contact, a quick glance toward the beeping contraption behind him, and a raised pistol. Twenty seconds later with him reeling on the floor blinking the stars out of his eyes, she gave up on walking and started dragging herself toward the bomb.

           Seven seconds.

_Westerburg will knock you down…_

           Six.

           She had no earthly idea what wire to pull, but she was determined to try anyway.

           Four seconds.

          She wasn’t going to make it, but her arms kept dragging anyway. His eyes met hers, and she couldn’t even begin to sift through what was going on behind them.

          Three.

          He reached out, blood dripping down his forehead, his mouth opened to speak. Her vision clouded with tears.

          Two.

          “Veronica, I’m-”

          One.

           _Send you straight to hell._

           Zero.

           And then the world was a blazing mess of burning heat and pressure. They were both within feet of the explosion. Death was excruciating and practically instantaneous. Waking up was less so.

           Her eyes snap open and she screams, bolting up in bed, clutching at her arms. Her leg aches hollowly as though the pulverized joint had only come partially with her out of oblivion. Desperately she thrashes at her covers until she frees herself and she is both relieved and confused by the spotless round shape of her knee, intact and completely functional. She reaches out and touches it, running her finger around the top and breathing deeply. It holds her so thoroughly that she doesn’t even notice the hurried footsteps outside her door, or the fact that she seems to be floating a bit.

           “Veronica! Sweetie, are you okay?”

           She hits the bed and the whole frame squeaks at the impact. She doesn’t have time to process it; her mom is opening the door.

           “I’m fine, mom. Bad dream.” It’s a lie. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she does. It’s still less weird than the floating thing. Her mom casts a look over her tossed sheets and the finger still tracing Veronica’s kneecap absentmindedly. She doesn’t say anything.

           “You need to get up, you don’t want to be late on the first day.”

           Veronica blinks. It’s the first day. “What?” immediately springs to mind followed closely by “How?”

           Instead she says “Okay,” and slips her feet onto the floor. Her knee twinges a bit at the pressure, but she pushes through it and gets to her feet.

           Her mother nods, satisfied, and starts slipping back through the door.

           “I made pancakes. Hurry so you can eat.” Then she’s gone, and Veronica is alone again.

          She has no idea what to do.


	3. Baggage and Bullshit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Veronica is angry, McNamara is sad, and JD gets a slushy.

Veronica walks to school alone. That isn’t unusual, not in this month, but after three months of being driven with the Heathers and then catching occasional rides with JD, the rhythmic silence of her own footsteps feels emptier than she remembers.

Ah shit, JD. _‘Let’s avert that train of thought shall we?’_

The whole morning had been one long awkward not-conversation with her parents. Her mother’s pancakes had been strangely tasteless for how much syrup she’d drowned them in. Her appetite must be off. It makes sense, she supposes. She passed it off as senior-year nerves when they finally just came out and asked, but that excuse isn’t going to last long.

It occurs that she’s oddly prepared for this day she doesn’t really care about. She has all her books. Her pencil box is fully stocked. Her freshly ink-lightened diary is tucked away in one of her backpack’s smaller pockets. She’s back in one of the fashion travesties she had worn at the beginning of the year. No scarf this time, though; god only knows why she’d put one on when the summer heat was barely beginning to pass on; maybe to look artsy?

Who could say? Veronica from three months ago was a fucking moron.

_‘Why am I going to school? It’s not like it even matters.’_ Her own mind provides the answer in the form of another question. _‘What the fuck else am I going to do?’_

It isn’t long before she’s standing in front of the doors, looking at the giant banner hanging above them. She thinks about what her classes will be, how much that had all mattered back before she’d become a Heather and managed to tank her grades to hell. She thinks how ridiculous and self-important every side of that coin feels now that she’s managed to get herself killed.

_‘Fuck it.’_ She veers off and makes her way to the football field bleachers.

She sits in the upper level, the only part of the whole setup with even a modicum of shade at this hour, and leans back against the railing, sighing and closing her eyes. The breeze rolls by, and she hears the bell for first period ring. Calculus. Oh, she had hated calculus almost as much as chemistry. Almost as much as Ram and Kurt when they’d finally tried to follow through. Almost as much as Duke for every rancid moment after.

_‘Fucking hell. How did everything get so bad?’_ She sits there in the shade for what feels like a few minutes running her thoughts in the same tired loops of simmering anger, depressed regret, and downtrodden hopelessness until the bell rings again and she stands up to pace, wringing tension from her hands and pushing her hair out of her eyes with more force than necessary. The wind blows past and she takes a deep breath, sitting down with her bag again and pulling out her notebook.

She opens to the first page and finds it empty: newly bought for her last year at Westerburg. She clicks her pen and puts it to the paper, imagining everything falling out of it onto the page so she can finally be silent for just a second, but suddenly all her brain is providing amounts to white noise. She sighs and attempts the basics.

 

September 1st, 1989

 

Dear Diary,

I’m alive. That shouldn’t be weird. It is anyway. 

 

Her pen rests on its latest period, letting the ink pool until the page visibly depresses into itself. She stares at it blankly, thinking how nice it might be to sink into that little spot of blackness and not come out until the world agrees to make some goddamn sense.

Maybe all it needs is time. Maybe her friends will learn not to hate each other. Maybe her classmates will learn to be kind. Maybe her boyfriend will stop being a homicidal manipulative shithead.

_‘And maybe flying pigs will jump out of my cleavage and sing opera.’_

The notebook slams closed in her hand and she stuffs it back into her bag, angry at the Heathers and JD and writers block and every dumb fucking thing that’s conspired to make her life a living hell for going on three months now.

Her backpack is swinging onto her shoulders before she even really knows what’s going on and she bounds effortlessly down the stairs to the track that rings the field. Her teeth are gritted behind her pursed lips. She doesn’t want effortless, she wants to take her anger out on something. A stray soda can has the nerve to be in her path and she sends it flying with a vicious kick.

She doesn’t remember being able to hit that hard. The little aluminum cylinder sails over the bleachers and smacks against a second-floor window. Her shoe isn’t far behind it.

“What the fuck?”

She darts off the track back toward the front of the school, still missing the flat from her left foot and unsure is she moved fast enough to avoid prying eyes from the offended classroom. She takes off the right shoe to balance herself out and finds that the grass feels good on her bare soles. She sinks down on the stairs out front and consciously ignores the thought of wilderness and freedom because they had wanted to go camping and god dammit why couldn’t they have just been normal?

Bad thoughts. She dismisses them and manages to burn the rest of second period staring at the clouds overhead. The bell goes off and she’s just decided to go back and get her shoe when clacking footsteps rise through the silence and a voice singlehandedly throws her into a momentary panic.

“So it’s everyone, huh? Interesting. They’ll probably know we’re coming.”

A few scrambling steps later she cleared the side of the steps and fell into a crouch, waiting for the sound of heels to pass.

She watches as all three Heathers and for some reason Martha walk down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. Chandler is decked out like she’s meeting royalty, Duke looks frazzled in a way that Veronica hasn’t really seen before, and McNamara is bundled up in a large yellow comforter. Martha looks extremely nervous and almost manages to trip over her own feet on the stairs. It’s all very confusing.

She watches them drive off in Chandler’s Porsche from behind a bush, head spinning with implications and white noise. Veronica didn’t need three guesses to figure out what Heather Chandler and everyone else apparently knew. The car rounds a corner three blocks down and Veronica finally feels safe enough to straighten up. Her backpack is heavy on her shoulders.

She can feel curiosity tugging at her like a needy child on her pants-leg. There’s only one thing in that direction that any of them care about and that’s the 7-Eleven. Following them would be stupid.

“Ugh… What the fuck else am I gonna do?”

          

It doesn’t feel right, sitting here. Shotgun in the Porsche was always Heather Duke’s spot before. It’s just the latest in a string of uncomfortable realities today, but McNamara can feel the green girl’s eyes drilling into the back of her head, so it bears a bit more immediacy. Thank god they aren’t the only three people in the car.

“Ah, Heather?” Heathers McNamara and Duke both swivel to look at Martha only to find her focused on the back of their resurrected leader’s perfectly styled head. The two girls in the back seat are as far apart as physically possible. She adjusts her yellow blanket around her shoulders and thinks longingly of her bed.

“What is it, Martha?” Heather’s eyes don’t stray from the road in the slightest, not even rising to the mirror.

The bespectacled girl blinks owlishly at hearing her actual name from someone popular, but seems to recover smoothly enough. “Ah well, I was wondering: who exactly are we looking for?”

“We’re hunting down the people who killed us all and dealing with them.” It’s a simple enough statement that would have sent McNamara wondering even a few hours ago, but today all it makes her is tired. She tries to think of nice things: cheerleading, her dog Ernie, or the cute boots she’d bought a week ago…

A week ago, before someone had killed her. She fights back bile as the chalky taste of pills rises on her tongue, and pulls the blanket tighter.

“Well, I mean, that’s nice, but ah… I mean, what do you need me for?” Heather’s eyes narrow in determination.

“Seriously, I don’t think we need to make a dirt pile-”

“Shut up, Heather.” Somehow, despite lacking the usual volume, the command is even more effective, and Duke falls back into angry silence without even an apology. “You’re insurance.” It’s ominous and vague, and Martha needs a moment to gather enough courage to follow up in light of the driver’s apparent sharp focus. Duke keeps her eyes fixed on the scenery. McNamara observes it all without a word, still doing her best not to throw up.

“And the call you made before we left school?” Chandler’s eyes finally shift from the road and meet Martha’s through the rearview, smoldering in annoyance.

“Same answer now shut up.”

Needless to say the rest of the drive passes in silence.

 

JD’s feet steer him into the 7-Eleven parking lot at about 11:30 AM, dragging a head immersed in storm clouds, a hand holding a cigarette too tight, and another that’s bruised and scabbed but has at least stopped bleeding. His coat is unusually heavy on his shoulders, not to mention terrible for the weather, but he keeps it on anyway.

Strangely enough, it appears he’s not alone in his pilgrimage. A small group of teenagers are all gathered around a picnic table off to the side of the store, passing around a bottle. He hadn’t expected them, but he doesn’t particularly care either, what with quite literally being dead. He ignores the looks they throw his way and trudges through the gas station to the doors, stomping out his nicotine at the threshold, shoving his way inside, and making a beeline for the slushys.

They’re out of both blue raspberry and cherry. Submersed as he is in a sea of memories and association he doesn’t know if he should be relieved or start cursing small-town supply lines. Regardless, he fills the biggest cup they have with Coke-flavored ice and marches it up to the counter. The man behind it is old, almost a foot shorter than JD, and frighteningly pale, sporting silvery-white hair and a face lined halfway to nonexistence. His nametag says “Andy” but he had always looked more like a Carl or a Herbert to the mass murderer.

“That’ll be six dollars, young man.” He sounds like he looks: whispy and gnarled, but not steely or closed off. He thought he remembered Veronica saying he was creepy once or twice. JD shoves the thought aside, nods, and pulls a wad of bills out of his pockets. He slaps down twelve.

“For the next one.” He walks off without waiting for a response, bringing the straw to his lips and doing his level best to inhale the entire contents of the cup in one go. Finally he’s forced to stop for air and he spends a few seconds impatiently tapping his boot against the floor, waiting for the-

_'JESUS FUCK, there we go…’_

Sweet icy nothingness. He gets to enjoy it for all of five seconds before the door rings open and there she is: Red Heather in all her trash-person glory, flanked by her two color-coded flying monkeys and Martha Dunstock of all people.

“Hey, Clyde. Where’s Bonnie?”

He’s barely past the worst of the freeze, but he’d have to be an idiot not to see this is trouble; the Heathers have sought him out and somehow roped a half-decent person into whatever bullshit they’re pulling. It doesn’t seem like a pre-death hallucination. His legs bend, his fists clench, and his whole body tense like a rubber band at the edge of snapping; it feels like every bit of stress he’s accumulated in the course of his life is about to burst out of his chest.

A part of him is already looking for escape routes. All four of them are bunched up in front of him, one of them is wrapped in a blanket for some reason, and an aisle is open on his right, but they aren’t slow enough to let him get away like that. He could try to fight them, but considering his knuckles and their numbers that would be stupid. His gun is back home and would have been loaded with blanks anyway. The situation is far from impossible but it could be a whole lot better.

Another part of him wonders at the strangeness of them all finding him here simultaneously during what’s ostensibly a school day. If they’re here for him then how did they know where he’d be? Hell, how do they know who he is in the first place?

“Ah, can I help you young ladies?”

_'Keep the change, Andy. You deserve it.’_

He’s on them before their heads can turn back, bowling over Chandler as McNamara squeaks out of his way, hitting into a stand of Slim Jims and candy bars. Martha doesn’t do much of anything as she watches him go, wide-eyed. He shakes off Duke’s hold on his sleeve without much trouble and feels a rush of warm, solid satisfaction. It’s the most positive thing he’s experienced in what feels like a year. He clears the doorway with a leaping stride, the door swinging wildly on its loose hinges.

Then he’s falling and the back of his head explodes with throbbing pain. His last thought is of Veronica’s voice. “My Bonnie and Clyde days are over.”

_‘Oh shit.’_ Then he hits the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a while. I'm a horrible procrastinator who can't focus on one project. Nonetheless, we livin.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and tell me what you think regardless.


End file.
